


am i naive for wanting something better?

by Princex_N



Series: the gentleness that comes not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it [7]
Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Angst, Autistic Erin, Autistic Hawkeye, Bullying, Conversations, Elementary School, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, M/M, Multi, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Hawkeye can tell that something is wrong the moment that Erin gets home.
Relationships: B. J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Erin Hunnicutt & Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Series: the gentleness that comes not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601140
Comments: 10
Kudos: 120





	am i naive for wanting something better?

**Author's Note:**

> really leaping forward for this one, but this lyric from [Steam Powered Giraffe's song "Transform"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRdkV208W80) really wouldn't leave me alone. 
> 
> I'm going to be writing more about Erin's school years eventually; this particular fic is set around her first day of second grade

Hawkeye can tell that something is wrong the moment that Erin gets home. 

She's quiet and tear stained, and the thrilled little skip in her skip that had been present most after school afternoons last year is nowhere to be seen. Hawkeye glances up at Peg in concern, but she shakes her head, so Erin hasn't spoken about it yet. 

"Hey, bug," he says, voice soft. "How was school today?" 

She pauses in taking off her shoes to stare at him miserably, but she doesn't say anything. 

Hawkeye grimaces. "That good, huh?" 

"It was _not_ good," she corrects sternly. Her tone is matter of fact, but Hawkeye isn't new enough at this to interpret that as casual. She hangs her backpack on its hook and pulls the sleeves of her sweater over her hands, lingering uncertainly in place before coming over to stand in front of him where he's sitting on the couch. "You are like me," she says.

It's not quite a statement, so Hawkeye nods. "Yes, I am," he says, searching her face for any hint of where this might be going, but he's pretty sure he already knows (he just really hopes that he's wrong). 

She nods at this and doesn't speak for a moment. Hawkeye can hear Peggy attempting to appear busy behind him, but she gives them both space. Erin's only eight, but they're already too well-versed in the mannerisms of difficult conversations. 

"Then I am not an alien," Erin finally says, her little voice wobbling. 

Hawkeye doesn't cringe, but the only thing that keeps him from it is years of looking into gruesome injuries that assuring the kid they're inflicted on that they're going to be perfectly alright. "No," he says firmly. "You aren't. And neither am I." 

The words break through whatever barrier she put up, and Erin bursts into tears and crawls unsteadily into Hawkeye's lap - both of them clumsily maneuvering around the knitting needles there to make sure that he doesn't get stabbed. 

"I thought I did it _right_ ," she cries, the words muffled into his shoulder, and Hawkeye _aches_ to be on this side of things. "I did it just like last year, the same way we always practice, but they were _mean_ this time. They told me I was weird, they told me I could not play with them, and they laughed but _nothing_ was funny. I do not know what I _did_." 

Hawkeye squeezes her tight, as tight as he can stand. "You didn't do anything wrong," he says, firm, desperately trying to unearth whatever comfort or advice he would have liked to hear at this age. "Sometimes with people like that, there isn't anything that you do to make them act that way. They're the ones with the problem." 

"Why?" Erin demands tearfully. "What is the problem?"

"Kids learn from adults," Hawkeye explains, feeling clumsy but unwilling to let Erin just sit there distraught while he tries to figure out a better way to say any of this. "Like their parents, but there are a lot of adults out there who grew up mean and never learned about how it's good that other people are different sometimes. That means that their kids know how to spot it, but they learned from their parents not to like it."

He presses his cheek to the top of her head, "I didn't say anything about anything that you did, did you notice?" She nods. "That's because you didn't do anything wrong. You're _different_ , just like me. I like you a lot, because you're different, and so do your mom and dad. They like _me_ a lot, because I'm different. Do you like me even though I'm different?" 

"Yes," she answers firmly, sniffling messily against his shirt in a maneuver that would be disgusting if any other kid did it (strange how love does that to you). 

"See? You're not the problem, alright? You have to remember that. Even when other people try to make us feel bad about being us, you have to remember that _they're_ the ones with the problem, not you." 

She nods into his shirt and curls up tighter, and Hawkeye rocks them both together as she cries the rest of her stress and sadness out, and he meets Peg's angry-helpless eyes above Erin's head, and wishes he had anything better to give. 

* * *

"Well, we have to do _something_ ," BJ hisses the moment Hawkeye is done explaining the source of Erin's dinnertime quiet anxiety. "There has to be something we can do." 

The way Hawkeye cringes doesn't inspire any hope, the movement worn and tired and familiar in all the worst ways. 

"It might not be worth it," he says, and raises his hands defensively at the look of outrage BJ gives him. "I don't mean that Erin isn't worth it, I mean that us going down there might not be worth it _for her."_ He runs his hands through his hair, standing up to pace when sitting and looking at BJ or Peg winds up too much to handle. "She's lucky that there aren't any doctors - any _diagnoses_ ," he corrects obnoxiously - a pale attempt at humor that doesn't work on any one of them, "involved. If we make a fuss about her then that might be where they choose to push things, and then they might threaten to, to kick her out of school entirely, or lock her away, or take her away from _us_ entirely just to lock her away." 

"Not to mention, we may just wind up kicking the other parents into a bigger fuss," Peggy adds when Hawkeye runs out of steam, and something about _her_ aversion to eye-contact reads Guilty in a way Hawkeye's doesn't. "Then _they_ might be the ones trying to get her out of the class instead of the teachers." 

"They'll never do anything anyway," Hawkeye says tiredly. "They'll just say she's not trying hard enough to fit in. They might even try to get Erin to stop taking time alone just to force her to spend more time with the other kids, and we all know that'll just make everything worse, and then we'll be right back at square one. Square _zero_ , even." 

BJ wants to argue, wants to tell them both that they're just being pessimistic, and that they'll all be able to work something out that will keep Erin from coming home with tear stains on her face and a backpack full of broken pencils, he wants to believe it himself more than anything. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? Aren't you supposed to root for and take care of the outcast? The underdog?

But Hawkeye and Peggy both look resigned, like they already know that the answer is 'no' with all certainty, like they're just waiting for him to finally get it through his head. It doesn't look like pessimism - it looks like experience. 

Dammit, Frank Burns was supposed to be the exception, not the _rule_. 

"Okay," he says reluctantly, and it _is_ reluctant because this is his _baby_ that they're talking about, but it's not as if Peg or Hawkeye love her any less than he does. "Okay. So, we're going to be the only ones in her corner, and we can't try to stop anything because we might only make it worse. Wonderful." 

The angry sarcasm in his tone is palpable, he knows. Peggy and Hawkeye both flinch under it - less at him and more at the rise of guilt and helplessness twisting at all three of them. 

BJ looks at them both and tries not to cry. "If we can't do anything about the school, then how can we make it better _here?_ How can we make _sure_ that she can come home and feel safe and loved enough to leave it all at the door? To go out again stronger?" 

It doesn't feel like enough. BJ doubts it ever will. It feels just like pinning a purple heart on an injured kid just because a different one got left in the dirt with nothing but false hope and a severed rope in his hand. A pitiful attempt at making right something that will never _be_ right. 

No matter what they're able to do, BJ isn't sure if it'll ever be good enough. 

Does that say something about them? Or about the world that they live in? 

(Will it matter to Erin, either way?)

* * *

Peg is the one that takes Erin to school every morning, and she probably always will be. BJ and Hawkeye would be more than willing, they know, but BJ goes to work before Erin goes to school most days, and Hawkeye is a resource best left for emergencies (because he's as much Erin's parent as Peg is, but he's also interpreted as an uncle by everyone else, and none of them want to risk arguing. Most uncles don't drop their nieces off at school, they know, and it's just another sacrifice on the pile dedicated to trying desperately to avoid making waves). 

Part of her enjoys it - _most_ of her does. 

But a small part of her wants to pick Erin up and run at just the thought. Sometimes her insistence that Erin gets an education and her refusal to let Erin try to deal with it alone is the only thing that keeps her with it. 

She has a routine worked out by now. Erin doesn't talk much outside of the house these days, so Peggy takes up the mantle better suited to Hawkeye and rambles herself silly the whole time they walk together. She talks about what she'll do while Erin is at school, about what got packed in Erin's lunch that day (even though it's always meticulously the same), about where Hawkeye will be that day, about what the plan will be once Erin gets home, about anything and everything and all the nothing in between. 

Erin always listens, which is good, because they figured a long time ago that Erin can only really listen to one thing at a time. This is, of course, the entire point to Peggy's one-woman-show. 

But just because Erin can't doesn't mean that Peg has the same privilege. 

"It's because of her mother," a woman in the parking lot is saying, as Peg chatters about what she'll make for dinner. "Probably got neglected something _awful_ while the husband was off in Korea. You know kids raised like that don't grow up right." 

"It's lack of discipline plain and simple." 

"If you ask _me_ , she shouldn't be in this school to begin with. She's a distraction, and how can those teachers expect _my_ son to learn with a disruption like _that_ sitting two desks down? It's unseemly." 

Peggy sometimes wishes she could go over there and give them a piece of her mind (what that looks like varies from fantasy to fantasy - sometimes it's a good verbal dressing down, sometimes it's some kind plea for understanding and acceptance, others it's as direct as a kick in the head), but she knows better. If they react first, it'll only ever be a nail in the coffin - proof that everyone was right about That Family, and any chance of staying here and trying to piece _something_ together out of the shards of glass other people keep handing them will be gone. 

So Peggy doesn't look at any of them as she walks by and catches their stares, and she keeps talking loud and clear enough that Erin won't be able to hear behind it and catch their giggles at the little lilt in her walk (Hawkeye was right that those kids learned it from _somewhere_ , but what kind of adult has it in them to mock an _eight-year-old?_ Especially to her face?), and tries not to let it show that it gets to her. 

But, _Gd_ , aren't they supposed to be _better_ than this? Weren't these women the people Peg had thought were her friends once? Don't they all go to church and simper about kindness and love? 

"I love you," Peggy tells Erin at the door, bending down to look at her and squeezing her close for as long as she can bear. "Don't forget it, okay?" 

"Okay," Erin agrees, almost by rote, and they both know that her believing it won't be enough to stop the anxious twist of her hands. "I love you too." 

Peggy presses her cheek against Erin's temple (their version of a kiss, since Erin doesn't like them) and stands up to leave and tries not to feel like she's abandoning her daughter at the mouth of a lion's den. 

(It doesn't work to make things any better)

(There is no voice to block out the gossip on her way out, either)

**Author's Note:**

> none of us ever find enough kindness in the world, do we
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
